The Atomic Giveaway
ECKARDT, W. V.
Senate filibuster presages November election battle on The Atomic Giveaway By W V Eckardt Washington, D.C. It was past 2 a.m. the other night. The big clock in the Senate chamber ticked away...
...There are sound strategic reasons to let our friends know at least a fraction of what the enemy knows at our mutual peril...
...Leland Olds, former Chairman of the Federal Power Commission, seems to think that there is a definite tendency to slow down progress in commercial production of oil from shale and the synthesis of oil and natural gas from coal...
...The Majority Leader, Senator William F. Knowland (R.-Calif...
...must have had these—to put it mildly—inconsistencies in mind when he suggested to Knowland that a commission be appointed to talk to the President...
...said he had a suggestion: Strike everything from the bill except the clauses providing for exchange of atomic information with America's allies...
...Since then, of course, American industry has raised its standards and is undoubtedly willing to go along with the President's plan...
...To pool our atomic resources with the free, if not the entire, world still appears as one of the few constructive steps we can take in the present dilemma...
...In the race between some measure of democratic welfare and Communism, the nuclear reactor holds great promise for the over-crowded and under-fueled people of India, Latin America, and even Italy...
...In the face of Knowland's steamroller tactics, the Democrats' droning talkathon was the only way to give adequate consideration to an issue of which it had been said that "never in the history of our democracy have we been compelled to rely on so few to debate a problem so vast...
...On the other hand, private industry, which still disposes of sufficient conventional fuels (such as coal and oil shale) to meet our electric-energy needs for 25 years, might well decide to hold back on atomic power development...
...These plants need more power, which the TVA could easily supply at low cost if permitted to build an additional steam plant...
...They doubt that the international atomic pool would have access to all nuclear possibilities for low-cost energy if, as the Republicans insist, private American companies are given vital atomic patents...
...The Electric Boat Company, as Drew Pearson recalled recently, paid commissions to the famed munitions peddler Sir Basil Zaharoff to sell submarines around the world, including Germany and Japan, in 1914...
...It was presumably in order to boost Cooper's vastly diminished chances for reelection this fall that the President, a week later, said that anyone who accuses him of trying to destroy the Tennessee Valley Authority "is—to put it mildly—in error.' Thirteen months before...
...That it was intended to critically weaken the public-power accomplishments of the last fifty years, including the TVA, is abundantly clear from the so-called Dixon-Yates contract provision...
...The Washington Post and Times-Herald, usually friendly to the President's projects, feels that "the method by which the contract was arrived at remains a shoddy one and a negation of the principle of competitive bidding.'' Senator Albert Gore (D.-Tenn...
...Republican President Theodore Roosevelt said at the dawn of another scientific revolution 53 years ago: "I think it is desirable that a general policy appropriate to the new condition caused by the advance in electrical science should be adopted under which these valuable rights will not be practically given away, but disposed of after full competition in such a way as shall best conserve the public interest...
...If the result was a "filibuster," the Republican Senate leader asked for it...
...Eisenhower before the President met the press...
...asked again if anyone on either side of the aisle could offer any suggestion for a unanimous-consent formula to limit time...
...There are the reasons Secretary of State Dulles gave when he said that the exchange of atomic information with our allies is "of utmost importance and urgency...
...Kentucky...
...Standard Oil of New Jersey made a deal with I. G. Farben which prevented our production of synthetic rubber for four crucial years...
...But its legally required report on the social and economic effects of peacetime uses of the atom has not yet appeared...
...aircraft industry...
...One of the principal objections of the opposition to the current bill is that private industry is given the green light to build atomic furnaces for the production of electric power and important chemical by-products before the effects of such activity on jobs and industries have been fully and publicly explored...
...When the vote was in...
...Morse recalled that a delegation to President Woodrow Wilson back in 1913 had resolved a similar legislative snarl over the Federal Reserve Bank Act...
...More important, perhaps, is the President's bold but almost forgotten speech to the UN last December...
...It leaves the REA and its rural-electrification co-ops out in the dark...
...was heard to observe: "In November, somebody else will have something to sa\ about it...
...of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy denies it, but liberal Democrats feel that some clauses would fasten a kind of Bricker Amendment around the President's power to make international atomic moves...
...Back in the Forties, Senator Harry S. Truman smoked out some discouraging international patent deals...
...The liberal Democrats who led the fight favor wholeheartedly our sharing certain atomic information with other countries...
...who fought valiantly against what he termed "the greatest giveaway of them all...
...Why...
...One possible effect might be the fostering by private-utility monopolies of a "colossus" in the energy field, which would hardly be compatible with our ideals of a democratic society...
...The big clock in the Senate chamber ticked away the 54th hour of the great battle over revision of the Atomic Energy Act of 1946...
...Eisenhower told his news conference the other day that he didn't know that a majority of the Atomic Energy Commission had opposed the Dixon-Yates contract...
...Some of the domestic provisions of the bill, Democrats say, endanger these pressing international objectives...
...the only Republican Senator from the TVA area...
...That, he said, would save an awful lot of time...
...then, the rush...
...In fact, as submitted the bill made no reference to public power at all...
...He might have learned this and other aspects of the power problem from his trusted friend, Senator John Sherman Cooper (R.-Ky...
...Mr...
...But that night and for many more nights and days to come, Senator Knowland continued to insist that the Senate and the nation swallow in the same pill both the remedy for atomic isolationism and the GOP medicine against "creeping public-power socialism...
...What is at stake at home and abroad, Democrats say, is nothing less than the most tremendous investment project ever undertaken by the American people, a project for which we mobilized our astounding scientific and industrial genius and paid at least $112 billion...
...And the Aluminum Corporation of America made a deal with the same German trust to keep magnesium away from the U.S...
...Chairman W. Sterling Cole (R.-N.Y...
...Meanwhile, the House in a fast-paced day-and-night session had bought the Administration bill lock, stock and barrel...
...The Eighty-third Congress cannot finally settle this issue, whose historical roots go back to the days when the first white settlers on this continent set out to harness its flowing waters...
...The TVA now uses about 50 per cent of its electric output to supply the atomic plants at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Paducah...
...called it a "crooked deal...
...Their syndicate is to serve the TVA's customers in Memphis, Tennessee, so that the TVA can accommodate the Atomic Energy Commission...
...The Bausch & Lomb Optical Company made its famous deal with Carl Zeiss of Jena for submarine sights...
...Cooper- who was not consulted when the bill was written, waited in vain to see Mr...
...Representative Chet Holifield (D-.Calif...
...But the fact remains that the countries in greatest need of nuclear energy are not likely to be among the highest bidders for privately-held patents...
...Fatigue hung over the chamber like a thick fog...
...Rather than ask Congress to appropriate the necessary funds for TVA expansion, the President personally insisted that the Atomic Energy Commission make a contract for the construction of a power plant with a private outfit headed by E. H. Dixon and E. A. Yates...
...Ike had pointed to the TVA as an example of "creeping socialism.' The indefatigable Senator Wayne Morse (Ind.-Ore...
...Democrats see the clue to the Administration's haste in the fact that its bill makes no provision to maintain the "preference clause" which, dating back to 1906, protects the interests of electric cooperatives, public utilities, and municipalities...
...The Atomic Energy Commission is supposed to recommend just such a "general policy appropriate to the new condition" caused by nuclear developments...
...But the Majority Leader pompously exclaimed that the Senate and President of the United States would not bow to the Morse formula...
...It even strengthened the private-power guarantees already in the bill...
...Senator Hubert H. Humphrey (D.-Minn...
Vol. 37 • August 1954 • No. 31
